Category Archives: The Family

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All cars have a story, and I’m about to get very carried away telling mine. It’ll be long, it’ll be detailed, and it’ll be full of links to YouTube videos and website articles better-articulating what I have done with this car.

Sunday, July 18th, 2010. 6:42pm. The corner of Village Way and Library Street, in Hudson, Ohio. I was in the downtown area of my community with my grandparents at a concert on our green. During intermission, we always took a little stroll to get some ice cream. This stroll happened to be a tad more expensive, but much more fun than the usual. Continue reading →

Yes, I’ve purchased another E39. Let’s recap a little. My other E39 is a 2002 Sterlinggrau 530iA. That car is in immaculate shape but like any other E39, it has it’s quirk. But, there’s a couple of reasons why I bought another E39. Continue reading →

Let me begin by saying that I may be slightly biased when it comes to my assured claim that the E39 M5 is the greatest sports sedan of all time. While there are many other remarkable performance sedans out there (E28 M5, E34 M5, W211 E55, C5 RS6, and countless others), the E39 has held a special place in my heart from a young age. Not many other sedans have aged as gracefully and the E39 M5 represents the perfect blend between past and present in the M5 lineage. While its performance is not as remarkably impressive by today’s standards, the E39 M5 blends the right amount of driver involvement with refinement. Continue reading →

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had a strong interest on cars. My dad’s a Captain in a ship so he travels a lot. He used to go to different places and get remote control cars for me. Often times he would get me Mercedes Benz and BMWs. I’ve had a strong interest in German cars. Continue reading →

There comes a point in time when people decide that they want to make a change in life. For me, that change was owning a BMW. The first I heard of BMW’s was as a kid going to the auto show with my father, and grandfather. Continue reading →

If I were to tell you that I’ve always been a fan of BMW, I’d be lying. Two years ago, if you were to tell me my first car would be an E46, I would have called you crazy! Living in Buffalo, NY, I pictured my first car as some sort of all wheel drive vehicle. I really was set on an older WRX, due to the decent performance, and great all wheel drive system. I was also your typical Fast and Furious type kid who drooled over JDM “riced” out cars. It’s bad, I know. Luckily, one trip to visit my brother in San Francisco changed my taste in cars completely. Continue reading →

Hello from Melbourne, Australia! My names Josh, i’m an automotive photographer and a mechanic. I like a plethora of cars but BMW has always been my number one. Thought I would give you all a bit of a background into my obsession with the BMW brand and an introduction to my E39. This post may get a bit long though, its a trip down memory lane for me right now 😛

G’day from sunny Brisbane, Queensland Australia! My name’s Daryl however I go by the online name Dodgy Haro on most car forums (clubroadster + club4AG) which I participate in. My car background is mainly JDM (previous AE86 and Na6 Miata owner amongst other cars) however I do appreciate European rides too and how they generally handle better on highways and don’t impart that plastic feeling you get from some Japanese cars. Continue reading →

For as long as I can remember, I’ve held a strong interest in cars, though my parents accredit that to a toy school bus I had as a toddler. After I turned four, I would point to cars on the road and ask my dad what they were. His limited automotive knowledge meant that every SUV was a Jeep to me; everything else was a mishmash. Through clipping pictures of nice cars out of magazines, collecting Hot Wheels sized cars, and reading the undercarriage for the label, I started to form a vague understanding of what I was seeing on the road.

Welcome to what is going to be a very long article, and a great wealth of knowledge. I am going to attempt to break down exactly what you need to do to retrofit a BM53 Radio, Auxiliary Input, and SIRIUS XM Radio into your BMW E39 5-series. It is important to realize that the BMW E39 uses an infrastructure for technology in the car known as I-Bus, or InformationBus. Picture it as the platform, and the language of hardware/software that makes everything technology communicate. I-Bus was first used on the 1989 BMW E31, or 8-series. It offers an impressive data transfer rate of 9.6KB/s. I-Bus was used until 2006, on the E46 3-series and E53 X5-series. This gave BMW a long time to create newer, better, faster, and more functional hardware that operated off of I-Bus. Note that many BMW models used I-Bus, but the majority of these are not compatible with the products listed in this article due to their age. The oldest car that I would expect to work with SIRIUS XM, for example, would be a navigation equipped E38 7-series. Continue reading →